Leapin’ Lee recalls Top 40 radio

Lee Ranson is well known to the media public of central Illinois, most recently as a weatherman in the Peoria market. He was also a long-time voice on WXCL country radio when that station was an AM powerhouse.

But before all of that, Lee Ranson was Leapin’ Lee, a deejay for WIRL radio, in the heyday of Top 40 radio — from 1960 to 1965.

That was the era of AM radio, fast-talking jocks who chronicled the rise — and fall — of singles on the charts. That was a time when young people spent as much time with their radios as they do now with their smartphones.

If you devoured pop music in that period, you punched two basic buttons on your car radio: WIRL and WLS, the Big 89 out of Chicago. Chicago’s WCFL was another possibility but it didn’t have the signal that WLS possessed.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, WIRL-AM 1290 (102.7 on FM) will run down the top 500 songs of all time over the Memorial Day weekend. Kicking off that countdown will be Leapin’ Lee, brought back out of retirement to take over the microphone once again. Other WIRL jocks of the past (and some of the present) will follow.

The radio station has put together a snappy little video on Ranson who recalls his days as one of the WIRL good guys. It’s right here.

Author: Steve Tarter

Born in England, raised in Boston, I'm a Midwestern transplant who's called Peoria home for the past 40 years. Married with four grown children, I enjoy journalism, film noir and radio drama. As the song goes, I like coffee; I like tea. Former president of the Apollo Theater in Downtown Peoria, I'm looking for a new raison d'etre.
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One thought on “Leapin’ Lee recalls Top 40 radio”

oh my gosh, i love this!!! I spent formative years in Peoria…3rd grade thru senior at bradley…then Flint, San Francisco, Toledo, back to Peoria til 1986! then til now New York! your interests listed above quite similar to mine. i love Peoria both nostalgically and literally—jubilee, prairie, and old hangouts, which are basically gone!!! i like Pinterest…my interests are there. would love to keep in touch with Peoria…parents dead, friends all over the place just like me…when Woodruff closed we were all heart broken…and i did not know the Apollo had a cheering section…peoria definitely does with all of us old (he he) Woodruff Warriors. thanks for your postings!!!